Russia's Revenge

Russia's Revenge

William Pfaff
Paris, October 21, 2008 – It did not take the clash between Russia and Georgia to reveal that relations between Russia and the West have taken a bad turn. They have been deteriorating since the mid-1990s, when the decision was taken to expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact states.

At the time of that decision, George F. Kennan, the most eminent American diplomat of his time, said this could be the most disastrous mistake made in American foreign policy in decades. He erred only in underestimating the comparative scale of the blunders that would follow, in the George W. Bush administration.

In a recent column I quoted the final U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, on the promise made personally by President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev that if East Germany was allowed to unite with West Germany, and the U.S.S.R. placed no obstacle to a unified Germany's continuing as a NATO member, the western alliance would not attempt to expand any farther into what had been Warsaw Pact Europe.

The president and the secretary of state agreed, with Baker saying, according to Matlock, "not one inch." In September 1990, German unification took place.

Unfortunately the agreement seems never to have been written down. Chairman Gorbachev undoubtedly looked deeply into Bush and Baker's eyes, as Bush's son was eleven years later to look deep into the eyes of Vladimir Putin. Gorbachev saw the souls of American gentlemen.

Or it may have been that there was misunderstanding all around. Bush may have been assuring Gorbachev that NATO forces would never move into what was about to cease to be the German Democratic Republic –- which indeed they did not, and have not.

It was Bill Clinton then who arrived in the White House at a time when the U.S. lobbies of the East European countries were demanding that these be included in NATO. The most influential was the Polish lobby in Chicago, which could swing the city and perhaps the state. In 1994 the so-called Partnership for Peace was created, a kind of cadet-membership in NATO. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined, and in 1999 became full members of NATO.

By this time, Republicans and Democrats were bidding for the election votes of American supporters of the rest of the ex-Warsaw pact states, and those of the Baltic nations as well, which during the second world war had been incorporated into the Soviet Union. They all joined NATO in 2004. Next came the candidacies of Ukraine and Georgia, both of which had been integral parts of the Czarist Russian Empire from the 19th century onward.

In his final book, "At a Century's Ending," in 1996, George Kennan said of the new post-Communist Russia something that no American government seems ever to have taken seriously. He wrote: "That Russia will ever achieve 'democracy,' in the sense of political, social and economic institutions similar to our own, is not to be expected. And even if Russian forms of self-government should differ significantly from our own, it is not to be postulated that this would be entirely a bad thing."

Nations are what history has made of them, which includes their bad experiences as well as the good. Vladimir Putin has proven extremely popular in Russia and extremely unpopular in the American government and media for exactly the same reasons. He is a Russian nationalist, has given Russia an independent and uncompromising stance that suits Russian pride, after two decades of the humiliation, disorder and social breakdown that many Russians now associate with American and western influences on their country. In Georgia he put a brisk and efficient end to what universally is seen in Russia as a deliberate provocation staged by the U.S.

Putin has also seen demonstrated that the United States and NATO are effectively powerless in the Caucasus, and in no position to interfere with Russia elsewhere in its own historical zone of interest.

Indeed, Russia now has been handed what amounts to a controlling interest in NATO's war in Afghanistan. As a result of American blundering in the Middle East, and of increasing trouble in Pakistan, the U.S. has been forced to ask Russia to permit the major supply route for the Afghanistan war to pass by way of Russia. The Russians have also just announced that they will not interfere with any new agreement keeping U.S. forces in Iraq.

The irony seems unnoticed in Washington. While abusing Russia for its policies elsewhere, the U.S. has made itself dependent on Moscow in order to continue waging the Afghanistan war. Russia is now in a position to influence how long that war goes on.

With its welcome to the United States to continue a troubled and unpopular occupation of Iraq, one might think that the Russians now are about to have their revenge for the Afghan defeat, and for their own setbacks in the Middle East.

They can sit back and observe Muslim fighters do to the American army, and American public opinion, just what the Moudjahidine did to the Russians while Russia was trying to control Afghanistan during the last years of the Soviet Union. They are saying to Washington: you want to go on fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Go right ahead.

© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.





This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com

The URL for this article is:
http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=349